


Sand and Water

by tomorrowthestars



Category: Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: F/M, reylo week 2018 day 5 (wounds)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-27
Updated: 2018-04-27
Packaged: 2019-04-28 10:18:07
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 992
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14447172
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tomorrowthestars/pseuds/tomorrowthestars
Summary: Rey wears a smiling face of denial during the day, but she can't always maintain it while she sleeps.





	Sand and Water

**Author's Note:**

> Backstory: Whether by choice or by necessity (haven't decided yet), Rey has left the Resistance and Ben has left the First Order. They have found each other and are hiding out on a remote planet, treading delicately around their feelings and maintaining the proprieties (there is one hut-like dwelling that they have to share, so she takes the "bed" and he camps out on the floor).
> 
> A possible future part of my other work "Night and Day", if I can figure out how they want to move forward from where they are now in that story.

The sun is harsh on her back. She can feel it burning her, as if it were fire licking along her skin, creeping under her clothes to find more of her to scorch away. Her childish mind wonders if she’ll go up in flames right here in a blazing column of orange and yellow and white. If there were shelter anywhere near her, she would crawl inside to stop burning. If she wasn’t too weak to crawl.

She is alone.

All around her is the vast desert wasteland. She does not even see any mirage on the horizon, not even a false hope of shelter and water. As she slowly blinks her eyes, she sees the world around her through a milky haze. The way her vision has changed makes her think of the bones she sometimes finds half-buried, bright white and rubbed clean by wind-driven sand. She thinks that might be happening to her eyes. She knows it’s happening to her skin; she can feel the burning more intensely in the places where the sand has been abrading her.

Her eyes hurt when they blink, when they move. They wouldn’t hurt so much if she could cry, but she can’t cry because she doesn’t have enough water in her eyes for tears. She doesn’t even have the energy to breathe enough to sob. And her breath is precious, slipping away every time she lets it out, and she’s afraid it won’t come back once she lets it go.

Everything hurts. Her head pounds with every heartbeat, and her heart stutters and slams painfully against her chest. Her lips are dry and cracked and her skin is a raw inferno. When she makes the slightest movement, the world spins around her and her stomach rolls in waves of nausea.

No one knows that she is out here. She is a tiny, motionless thing in the middle of an endless horizon of sand. No one could even see her against it unless they were close enough. She knows that no one will come close enough.

She wants her mommy, her daddy. She doesn’t remember them, but she wants them more than she’s ever wanted them before. If they don’t come soon, they’ll never find her. She will close her eyes and let go of her breath and her bones will bleach in the sunshine or sink below the sand and they’ll never know.

She admits the truth to herself, in the final moments. She has spent all her time pretending, has counted each passing day until their return, but now there is terrible clarity. They deserted her here, to starve and dehydrate alone, to leave behind nothing but bones and sand. They never meant to come back, and they never will, not even for her bones. They don’t want her. They don’t care. They never did.

She is alone, and the sun is burning, and her body is failing, and she is nothing.

She breathes in one last time, knowing that when she breathes out she will let go for good and disappear completely, as worthless and unloved as she always knew she was. 

As she begins to fade, she feels a pair of arms around her. They are strong but so gentle, and they are lifting her into the air and carrying her somewhere. She is confused, because she hasn’t seen water for so long, but her face is wet; she has no breath, and yet she is making noises; and someone is there with her, when the whole world was so empty before.

Rey begins to wake up.

The wetness on her face is a flood of tears. The noises she is making are desperate, choking sobs. She is not a little girl lying miserable and still in the desert sand; she is a woman on an island, surrounded by ocean water. The grass outside is bright green, and the entire island teems with life and food. She is not starving. She is not dehydrated. She is not dying alone and unloved and unwanted.

It wasn’t real. But she is desolate and broken all the same, and she cannot stop crying.

The arms gently tighten around her. They are real, and when she figures this out she sobs even more as she burrows her face into the body of the person who is holding her, the person who is reassuring her that it was only a dream.

She is being set down on blankets spread on a hard surface, and she clings to the one who carried her, hands tightly grasping the material of the shirt she’s got her face pressed into. 

She does not want to be left alone again.

And she isn’t, not even for the moment it takes to lay her down on the blankets. The one who holds her promises that he’s not leaving her and whispers that she’s not alone. She hears him quietly swear that he will never let her go hungry again, as if he’s making a vow.

Her sobs begin to fade, but she does not let go of his shirt, and he does not let go of her.

She drifts back off to sleep with her head on his chest, listening to his heartbeat sounding strong and sure beneath her ear, as he slowly rubs her back.

When she wakes in the dim, cloudy light of mid-morning, she is still in Ben’s arms, in the mess of blankets on the floor that passes for his bed. Over the sound of his heartbeat she can hear the waves lapping at the shore far beneath the hut and the rain splashing gently on the stone roof above them. She is pleasantly, drowsily warm, and she can breathe deeply. And while she is no longer starving, she is, as usual, hungry.

She tilts her head up and finds him watching her, his eyes cautious.

“What’s for breakfast?” She asks.

His gaze softens. “Anything you want.”


End file.
